


Thrice Blessed

by fangirls5ever



Series: Queen of Brambles and Thorns [1]
Category: Voltron - Fandom, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Gen, Lance Pidge and Keith as the three fairies, Seelie and Unseelie courts, Sleeping Beauty!Allura, but the curse is different than that of the original story, fae!au, hopefully not too graphic though, it's a very loose connection tbh, sleeping beauty!AU, tw for violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 13:26:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15558714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fangirls5ever/pseuds/fangirls5ever
Summary: Gifted thrice, cursed once.---Loosely-based Sleeping Beauty au





	Thrice Blessed

Princess Allura of Altea was four months old when she was presented before her kingdom, nobles and visiting royalty invited to offer gifts and praise for the child and parents. Already, with their congratulations, the wealthy visitors would slip in sly words of future advantageous matches, assurances of growing influence and wealth. 

Gossips would murmur to each other behind lacquered fans, men and women pressing silken gloves to their mouths to muffle the words. It was certain the princess was to be beautiful, just as it was that she would be exceedingly wealthy with her kingdom's rich fields and gold-veined mountains—this was her people's reward for braving the land so close to those of the faerie. To have connections within Altea would not only allow diplomatic ties with the monarchs of the kingdom, but also the creatures that made their home in the woods beyond it.

And even children knew of the wealth that they kept there, of the waters that ran gold and the stags whose antlers were carved of glittering black diamond.

So when the Seelie fae arrived astride their winged mounts, it was with hungry eyes that the representatives watched them glide on shadow feet to the dais, sweeping into low bows before the king and queen.

The three fae representatives straightened as the queen motioned a nursemaid forward, clever gazes snapping quickly to the child as the woman moved to stand before them. Curtsying, she handed the infant to the first faerie, a boy dressed in a silky blue tunic and black leggings, the faerie cradling the child against his chest.

Flashing a sharp-edged smile at the watchful parents, he looked down again at the princess, saying, "Pretty, I suppose. At least for a human." Lifting a long, spindly finger, the boy tapped lightly against the child's forehead, watching as sleepy sapphire-and-rose eyes opened in response. He waited, head canted to the side, as the infant studied him serenely, eyes blinking once, twice more before again fluttering shut.

The boy's smile gained an almost crooked air to it as he grinned, lifting his free hand higher and extending one finger. "Brave, aren't you child?" he said, and at his fingertip, the air began to shimmer with pale blue light, the energy glittering like light across water. To the king and queen, the boy said, "To the child, I give the gift of courage, that she may prove to her people that a princess is worth more than just her beauty."

The king and queen nodded, calling, "We accept your gift given on behalf of your king."

"My thanks," the faerie boy said before bringing the tip of his finger to rest against the infant's forehead, blue light flaring in one last dazzling display before fading away. 

Stepping back to stand beside the two other representative, he passed the princess to a girl dressed in pale green woven armor, gold markings curling along the smooth inside of her wrists and the curve of her threat. The hilt of the bone dagger at her side brushed against the infant as she took the child carefully into her arms, the faerie warrior grimacing.

Giving the slightest shake of her head as the faerie boy nudged her side, the girl raised one hand, saying to the watching royals, "My gift is that of wit, that she might match that of all creatures, mortal or faerie."

The royals acquiesced, and with a quick press of three fingertips to the child's mouth, the gold runes along the girl's body flared a bright, burning gold, images seeming to writhe as her magic passed through her skin to the child, settling again to a gleaming gold as the gift faded into the child.

The last of the fae, a boy dressed in red leather armor, took the child cautiously from the girl, looking down at the sleeping infant with ink black eyes, the iris swallowed up in the shadows that swam through them. Raising one hand slowly, dark gaze fixed solely on the child, he said, "Strength, to match her courage in battle."

The last blessing was passed onto the child in a curl of red-orange flame pressed to her both her hands, light fading as the ritual was complete.

Holding out the child to the nursemaid waiting at the side of he dais, the three faerie swept into low bows, mischief again sparking in their eyes with their roles complete. "May your child find favor among your kind and our's, your majesties," the girl said.

"May she use her gifts to the fullest," the boy dressed in blue said.

"And may her life be well-lived when Death comes to greet her," the boy in red finished, and all three rose, forms beginning to shimmer as their glamours slowly slipped away to reveal sharp, gleaming fangs, cat-slotted eyes, curling vines—

The faerie boy in blue looked to the sleeping princess just moments before the three disappeared, lips curling again in a crooked smile. "See you soon, princess," he purred, and with a gust of summer wind, the Seelie fae vanished.

And in their place, a woman in a long, trailing violet cloak stood, back hunched and yellowing teeth bared in a feral smile. "My turn now," she said sweetly, and with a whirl of her cloak, the throne room was washed away in a wave of black.

\---

When the darkness at last crept back to the shadows, limping like a wounded animal, it revealed a scene all too different from the immaculate scene it had once been.

The Altean queen was laid across the dais with a knife through her chest, hands folded in a cruel mockery of her kingdom's funeral rites. Guards lay fallen across the whole throne room, mouths twisted in agonized screams and the blood in their veins running thick and black with shadows, shadows that flickered like flames, scorching them from within and burning them away to nothing but soot and ash—but they made no sound as they writhed, the witch's magic having stolen even their voices in its cruelty.

Courtiers crouched down against the floor, eyes wide and breaths coming quick as they searched the room, finding themselves and other members of their party unharmed before at last looking to the dais—

The king was silent where he sat rigid in his throne, unmoving, magic barely daring to allow him breath as the faerie witch stood before them all, infant cradled almost lovingly in her arms. The child was mercifully silent in the faerie's hold, fast asleep as the woman stroked a gnarled hand through her few locks of hair, fingers lingering over where the Seelie fae had granted their blessings.

"What a beautiful princess," the faerie purred at last, voice low and rasping, her yellow eyes narrowing with amusement as she watched the king struggle. "And already blessed thrice by the Seelie, I see." Her smile was slow, languorous, almost serpentine in its grace. "My king likewise sends his regards, mortal—I too am here to bless the princess."

The king's face flushed red, veins standing out along his jaw and forehead as he struggled against his invisible bonds, body straining.

The faerie witch only arched a pale brow at his actions, a twitch of her fingers slamming his head back with a _crack_ against the blue marble of the throne. "Now now, king," she said. "You didn't really think you could escape me so easily, did you?" Flashing him one more easy smile, the faerie turned, child held aloft to the crowd as she raised her left hand. "My gift to the princess," she called, shadows beginning to slip from the walls to twine about her fingers, cloaking her hand in dark violet, "is one of desire—may any mortal who sees her wish so badly to possess her that it should devour their very minds, consume every part of their being. May they be driven mad with want for someone they can never have." Slowly, mockingly, the faerie witch turned, meeting the king's wide-eyed stare as she dipped low into a curtsy. "My king," she purred, eyes gleaming with faerie malice.

And with hand still burning in violet shadows, the woman slashed her claws viciously across the child's face.

The crowd gasped, a ginger-haired member of the nobility rushing forward as at last the king leapt from his throne, magic at last released. The woman set down the now-thrashing infant, glowing with power and triumph even as she turned to watch as the king rushed her, hand swinging down to the ceremonial sword at his side, intent on cutting down the threat even as she burned with power, slipping away on a rising wind as she smiled and smiled, saying—

"Even you, my king, will not be exempt from this curse—so what will you do now, I wonder?"

And in a blaze of violet fire, the faerie vanished.

\---

With the witch's curse weighing heavily on the Alteans' minds, it was very quickly that the king and his council made a decision. If all mortals were to desire the princess upon only a mere glimpse of the girl, then there could only be one solution: Allura could only be safe in the sights of immortals.

And so, at only four months, the princess was sent to the Seelie court to be raised and cared for, seen to it through diplomacy that she would be raised as well as a child of the faerie king himself.

But even with the assurances of the Seelie monarch, both king and country had little hope for a mortal within undying lands, for a powerless child surrounded by magic as old as the earth itself. When the princess was returned to them, they were certain, it would be as a captive, for the fae were greedy and jealous beings, or a corpse, for they knew that the immortal beings craved slaughter in a way humans could never understand.

They thought she would return weak, powerless, a victim of the fae she lived among.

Already they mourned the princess they had never had, mourned her grace and wisdom and the kindness with which she might have lead her kingdom—they mourned the living girl as they might the dead, a tombstone carved and place prepared within the royal mausoleum for when the princess would at last be returned home. In their minds, she had already fallen beneath wicked claws and dark threads of magic, had already fallen to the corruption and wickedness of the fae.

But when Princess Allura of Altea returned to the mortal part of the world, it would not be as a prisoner of the fae, a victim of their wars, a beautiful girl given away to Death all too soon...

When Princess Allura returned from the world of the fae, it would be as their queen.

\---

**Author's Note:**

> (I'll come back and write the end notes tomorrow, I'm just really tired and ready to be done for tonight :') Comments and reviews always make me so happy—I always write back on each one.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!)


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